Reflections on Earth Day

This year I jiggered together a sort of semi greenhouse out of Wal-Mart shelving, animal fencing and a heavy plastic drop cloth. I set out trays of Cherokee Purple tomato seeds saved from last year's crop (lost one tray because it got too hot one day, and they cooked!), long pepper seeds -- we could pretend they're Hatch chiles, but they're not, they're seeds from garden variety Anaheim chiles grown in Texas,-- a tray of wildflower seeds, and pots of Indian corn and bolita beans, cantaloupe, acorn and butternut squash, catnip, lavender, and other flower varieties. Most of the seeds have germinated, and the tomatoes and peppers are almost ready to transplant to larger peat pots. I think I'll have plenty to give away this year just as was the case last year. Some of the people who took the plants last year said they had the Devil's own time trying to get any fruit off the vine, but tomatoes are touchy. It's simply a fact that it's very dry in New Mexico, and tomatoes like lots of water. I know one year I grew tomatoes here and for a while, the plants seemed to flourish and then they declined, never had more than one or two tomatoes from each plant, and then they seemed to shrivel and die. I'd grown them in large pots with good potting mix, and so their decline seemed strange -- until I pulled out the plants and discovered that only the top couple of inches of the soil had any water. Most of the soil in the pot was bone dry; I hadn't watered them nearly enough, though to my eye, and to my California conditioned watering hand, they'd had more than enough water. Lesson -- sort of -- learned.

This season, we had the driest winter in many years, and it has affected everything. I've started watering the trees and lilacs and other long term residents of our property here, but some,  I think, aren't going to make it. They've had many years  of drought stress before this only occasionally relieved with "good years" of reasonably abundant rain and snow. And a "good year" is dry by any common measurement.

The Indians abandoned this area in the 1670s during a severe drought and famine exacerbated by Spanish colonial Franciscan padres who simply saw the suffering of the Indians as God's wrath for  idolatry and whatnot. By the time the nearby pueblos were vacated, there were only a few hundred Indians left. They mostly joined pueblos on the west side of the mountains along the Rio Grande -- which apparently still had some water in it. This area was left more or less uninhabited for many years. The raiding tribes would set up temporary camps amid the ruins, and from time to time Spanish settlers would run their cattle and sheep over the range. But otherwise, it wasn't until the early/mid-1800s that small settlements were set up on the lower slopes of the mountains, and re-settlement of the plains (without the Indians) only got going in the early 1900s.

It's not easy land to farm, and drought is a persistent risk. I'm sure the early dry-land bean farmers were shocked the first year the rains didn't come. And the next and the next and the next. Eventually, they realized they couldn't rely on summer rainfall and winter snow to grow their crops, and somebody decided to drill down into the aquifer that underlies the whole basin. Sure enough they hit water, and ever since, such crops as are grown here have been under irrigation. But it's an uneasy balance.

There are a few farms still operating, but mostly such agriculture as there is around here is cattle raising, and when things get too dry -- as they seem to be right now -- the cattle... disappear. Where they go is one of those.... mysteries. Most I imagine go to slaughter right away. A few go to feed lots or greener pastures in Texas and Colorado.

The farms grow beans and corn and alfalfa and a few other crops for the animals, not so much for people. I'm one of several trying to get some varied vegetables to grow here. It's possible with enough water, soil amendments and care, but it's not easy.

For one thing, the soil lacks nutrients. It's mostly heavy clay with some sand, and it's highly alkaline. Organic matter is nearly completely absent, and all our attempts to establish a compost pile have failed. There are no earthworms, and practically no soil bacteria. Compost doesn't form because the material you're trying to compost doesn't decompose. It petrifies.

They say there's a way to make compost in buckets if you're patient and you keep it wet and introduce bacteria and earthworms, but I haven't figured it out yet. The two open piles we started are kind of hilarious what with their petrified garden debris and food scraps. One has grown quite large, but nothing has happened. Everything is as it was deposited, just dessicated.

In pots -- and bags and other containers -- things can grow very well. The only things we've been able to grow in the soil have been tulip and daffodil bulbs, but even they are stressed by the super-dry winter, and this year they are pretty peaked and wan.

Our farmer friend down the road supplements his soil with fish emulsion and manure. It gives him good crops, mostly beans and corn, but he's had only middling luck with vegetables. They will grow, but it's like they don't want to. He's preparing to grow some vegetables in greenhouses, but his first attempt failed when some kind of disease in the greenhouse killed off most of his plants. I don't think he's going to try again this year, but his kids have set up two vegetable plots outdoors. They set out lots of plants one weekend. Couple of days later, there was a hard freeze overnight. They'll have to replant when the weather warms up enough.

My beans and corn germinated in the greenhouse a week ago, and that same hard freeze killed most of the beans. Even though the greenhouse has heat (a number of 25w pads) I forgot to turn them on that night, and by the time I remembered, it was too late. The corn is struggling, but looks to be surviving. I'll plant more shortly.

So far, the squash and melons have not germinated though they were planted weeks ago. I'll give them another few days, then try again. Oddly, some hollyhock seeds that are at least five years old are starting to germinate. We'll see. They can be really tough to grow. You never know.

Though there have been some failures and disappointments so far this year, all in all I'm pretty pleased with the way my modest attempts at growing things are going. Freezing overnights have not quite ended, though, so I might have some more losses. It's not all that cold right now (early morning -- about 5am, about 37°) but the prediction is for it to freeze again by 6am. I've got the heat on in the greenhouse just in case.

I've just got to keep learning and trying.

Meanwhile, we don't do nearly enough R, R, & R, though I think we do much more than most others. Our garbage can, for example, is hardly ever full, unlike that of our neighbors -- some of whom have two cans overflowing, week after week. We recycle, reuse, and repurpose as much as we can, and so we send much less to the landfill than we might.

We learned about "living lightly on the Earth" many years ago and those lessons have stayed with us.

Even our house is a recycled pioneer adobe. From time to time, I think about doing another renovation/remodeling, but since we're getting up there in years, I'm not so sure it's going to happen before we shuffle off this mortal coil. We'll have to make do in the meantime..

Reflections on Earth Day? Over the decades, the lessons are largely ingrained and unconscious now. Sometimes the advocates get too enthusiastic and expect too much from individuals and not enough, it seems to me, from civic bodies and institutions. There's a constant tendency to approach the issues of Earth Day from a position of superiority over those who haven't got the message yet. Demanding, directing, disapproving, hectoring, yadda, yadda. It seems to me, too, that the whole thing is so very, very... white. Ain't much of a Rainbow Coalition. Those who have adopted some of the principles, however, or who have always lived by them, aren't nearly so white or so judgmental at all. We just do our thing!

Keep on keeping on...

Christmas Comes But Once A Year

Shiny Brite wreath

Today is Ms. Ché's birthday. She was a Christmas baby and throughout her life she's had two celebrations at Christmas time. She said when she was young, she thought all the Christmas hoo-hah was for her and I suspect she still thinks that.  Heh.

This year, we'll be going out to dinner this evening at Los Poblanos in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, then tomorrow we'll head up to "Mabel's Place" (Los Gallos, the Mabel Dodge Luhan House) in Taos. We'll try for Christmas dinner at Doc Martin's, but I dunno. The town gets packed at Christmas time, and we may have to settle for a couple of Lotaburgers at Blakes. One makes do... ;-)

We were concerned about the weather when we made reservations a month or so ago. It looked like and it felt like we might have some snow for Christmas (always nice but not good for traveling), but no. Not even a hint of it. Sunny and dry and usually very warm day after day. They say there's a La Nina underway, but this is the driest and warmest December I can remember in New Mexico. Earlier this week, the prediction was for very cold overnights and mornings -- below zero in both Taos and our place about 100 miles south -- but no.

Right now, about 6am, the temperature outside here is 42; even in Taos, it's 27. Not "cold" by New Mexico winter standards at all. It feels odd. But because of Climate Change, I'm expecting it to become the New Normal. Actually, we've been having more frequent and more intense droughts for years now.

Drought is what drove many people out of New Mexico time and time again. The three big pueblos on the back side of the central mountain chain were abandoned in the 1670s due to drought (among other reasons, the Spanish padres and their delight in suffering being one), but there are ruins and remains of many other pueblos scattered through the east mountain area, most of them abandoned during earlier droughts. Some were reinhabited, but most, once abandoned, were not rebuilt or returned to.

The last long and severe drought in our area was in the late 1940s and into the 1950s. Old timers say it was worse than the Dust Bowl years, and that was bad. Most of the few people who lived in this area left for greener pastures. If they could find them. So it has gone throughout the centuries in New Mexico, so even as worrying as the situation is now, most folks are at least somewhat prepared for the worst.

So this Christmas with no snow and balmy temps will stand out in our memories, even if it wasn't Ms Ché's significant b-day (she's... drum roll... 70).

Taken at Christmas 2010? I forget. The scene is down the road from our place.

Best Wishes to all, and to all a... better New Year!

OT: Domestic Affairs

Well, the charger came from Los Angeles -- still waiting on the one from China, and figure it's best to have two anyway since the one that died was destroyed by my heavy foot getting caught in the cord over and over again... so I have my computer back and can start to get caught up, but at the same time, I have so many more domestic chores to take care of since Ms Ché started back to school, and there are routine fall things to do -- bulb planting, garden clearing, etc -- and (or maybe that's AND) I'm still doing a lot of sketching, etc. Days are more than full. Nearly forgot, the skunk man is coming tomorrow. Have to get ready for him, too. Ah, the skunks. So beautiful they are, but so stinky!

Domestically, well.

It's 2-2 1/2 miles to the post office; we don't get mail delivery out here, have to pick it up at the PO. Some of our neighbors walk, which is fine if you're up for it or into it, but I can't -- still struggling with aftermath of sciatic lameness from a couple of years ago, and now the onset of arthritis (boo!) has given me additional joint issues to deal with. Actually, when I joined the march against the Killer Kop Kompetition in Albuquerque last month, it was the first time I'd attempted that kind of extended hike since before my left side gave out and laid me up a couple of Januaries ago. Didn't quite make it -- many thanks to the kind soul who picked me up and drove the last few hundred yards -- but almost did. That was about 2 1/2 - 3 miles round trip. Good gauge of what I can/can't do.

It's about the same distance to the nearest grocery store. Maybe a little farther. It's a nice little independent store, though selection is somewhat limited. It's not fancy or high-end-foodie, not at all, but they have a real butcher, decent prices -- though much higher than we were used to in California -- friendly staff, and are open early and late. Since I have to get the groceries these days, it's nice to know there's someplace that close.

There's a Smith's and a WalMart the next town over, and I sometimes go to one or the other if there's something the local market doesn't have. I boycotted the WalMart for years until the local Pick-n-Choose closed (it was called Alco). Then, certain gardening, household items, clothing, and such like were simply not available locally. Actually, quite a lot of things weren't available locally any more. Some we could do without, but others....

So, it was off to WalMart now and then. Gaa. Not only is the store far larger than is necessary in this area (fewer than 5,000 people live in the store's shopping area -- say within 15 miles or so) but it's got some really... interesting... ways of doing business. For example, items are frequently (routinely?) shelved in the wrong slots so that it appears from the shelf price that such-and-such will cost X-amount, but no. Get to the check out and it's -- whoops! Oh, but it's worse than mere mis-shelving. In too many cases to count now, the items are shelved correctly, but the item rings up at a different -- sometimes much higher -- price than the shelf price, and unless you're eagle-eyed you're probably not going to know. In fact, it's pretty much impossible to keep track of the prices being scanned and rung up because you're still unloading your cart as the checker does his/her job. So the only way to know whether you've been overcharged is to scrutinize your receipt after the fact. And have a sharp memory for the shelf-price.

Alco used to do it too, but they closed. Smith's has taken to doing the same thing. They take it a step further, not pricing certain items on the shelf at all. One doesn't know until one gets to the checkout what the price is. Sometimes the surprise is a shock.

WalMart also has these bagging carousels, and by golly, how often is one (or more) of the customer's bags conveniently left behind? Oh, if my own experience is any guide, fairly often. One is not likely to notice one is missing a bag or two until one is home and unpacking one's things and notices that something one thought one bought is not there. Hm. Wha? In my dottage, it's not unusual for me to forget this or that, so I'm likely to be puzzled about missing items rather than certain that I left them behind. Maybe I didn't pick them up to begin with? But one time, I was sure, and I went back (another 10 miles from home, 20 round trip) and found the items had been re-shelved already. They gave them to me without objection, but still...

I figure these fairly common merchant practices can easily add 15%-20% to a customer's charges every time they shop. Quite lucrative, so lucrative merchants can happily refund overcharges brought to their attention and replace missing items the customer complains about because so often overcharges aren't noticed and missing items are "just forgotten" especially by the elderly... clever.

I wonder just how common this practice really is? I hadn't noticed it before, but it seems to be widespread in these parts nowadays. Initially, I thought I was imagining things but not any more. Now I think it really is a commonplace merchant policy.

I would have had no idea were it not for the fact that I have to take care of a lot more domestic chores now that Ms Ché has gone back to school. Oh, by the way, she got her midterm grades the other day. All "A" -- except for the two "A+". My my!

There is still much fall planting and year-end outside clean up to do. I managed to clear out the gutters and get those on the front of the house to work for the first time (they were installed wrong to begin with but I hadn't been able to tackle the project to fix...) I'm trying to clear out one of the sheds so I can bring the stuff we still have in storage in California. BUT as I was doing that chore, I saw the news about the mudslides closing highways in Southern CA. Thought little of it until I saw that one of the highways was Highway 58 that I take from Bakersfield to  I15-I40 in Barstow. 6 feet of mud for a mile or more outside of Tehachapi(e). Oh. Brother. I would have taken the plane in November, then rented a truck to bring the stuff in California back to New Mexico, but Highway 58 is my route to get from there to there (the alternatives are much longer) so... maybe not. Better wait till spring.

They say this El Nino is shaping up to be the most intense since 1988. There have been certain signs of course. Our local drought is broken (thankfully. It went on way too long...) We've had plenty of rain and they say there will be pretty heavy snow this winter, but so far temps have been mild, balmy, even warm. No frost at all. May not be any till mid-November... wow.

Of course the situation in California becomes more and more Apocalyptic, seemingly by the day. Our friends who still live there insist things are not really as bad as the news is making it out to be, but I'm somewhat less Panglossian about it. The fires were terrible and raged through areas we're pretty familiar with around Clear Lake and in the Gold Country. No one we know was directly harmed, but still... Floods and mudslides of course will be more widespread than ever. The persistence of drought in the midst of these catastrophes compounds the misery. After a while, it becomes too much to bear...


Though I will probably always be a Californian deep-down, I realized I had become a "real" New Mexican the other day when it occurred to me that I routinely get offended by the most unlikely or innocent things that people say or do. This is a very New Mexican trait I've discovered, taking offense being something of a core value it would seem. It doesn't usually last more than a little while, but it's pretty frequent, and sometimes it makes me laugh at the pettiness and silliness of it.

Now to get back to getting stuff done...

Mark Morford Explains It All For You

Doing something about Climate Change has been the terrestrial general directive for decades. From time to time, something is done, but it's never-ever enough, not even close. The atmosphere continues to fill with carbon dioxide, the global temperatures and sea levels continus to rise, and crippling droughts, destructive storms, ice and snow, and heat waves beyond measure bombard us relentlessly.

I understand this is the third year of crippling drought in parts of California (after quite a few years of higher and higher rain and snowfall in many other areas). The situation is perilous for the farming areas, not much better in the cities.

Mark Morford has been writing an often hilarious and biting column at the San Francisco Chronicle for quite a few years now, while teaching yoga and other flexible body arts on the side. He's offered a commentary on the drought situation in California, and I'll just excerpt the following:

Which is to say: dramatic climate change is no longer even remotely preventable. It’s here. It will be here for centuries. And yes, most of what’s happening is very much our fault. It’s now only a question of severity, adaptation and survival.

Indeed.

That's where we are. There's no preventing any more, no going back. The open question is how bad it will get, what sort of adaptations will be necessary, and who among us will survive.

Welcome to the Future. 

Biblical Floods? Biblical? Eeeeyikes,

Gallinas River in Las Vegas NM, September 13, 2013

Estes Park, CO, September 13, 2013



Rio Rancho - Southern - Flood
 
flood in Las Vegas NM

Colorado and New Mexico are getting hammered by unusual (for September) rainfalls, deluges if you will, inundations, quite frankly, that have spared little of the southern Rockies from flooding and washouts. In parts of Colorado and New Mexico, entire communities are isolated, surrounded by or cut off by flood waters.

Emergency Services is... stunned.

We're in the Estancia Basin, a level plain, rather high in elevation but not mountainous, though we are just east of the backsides of the Sandia and Manzano Mountains. Though we've had a lot of rain recently, the water has mostly soaked into the ground, and we haven't experienced floods right here. (There is a leak in our roof, however!)

The run off from the mountains has caught some people off-guard and I'm sure there've been some harrowing adventures as the rains have poured from the skies and run down the mountainsides.

Many areas of Albuquerque, the pueblos north of town, the Roswell area, Carlsbad, and Truth or Consequences to the south, and other widely scattered areas of New Mexico have been hard-hit by flash flooding and rivers rising, to the point where Susana la Tejana, Our Governor, has declared the entire state a disaster area. Well. Who'd a thunk it? She's actually been pretty good during disasters, given her sometimes rigid R politics.

But whatever is happening in New Mexico -- and I haven't caught up on the overnight news -- it has been much worse in parts of Colorado, particularly in the Front Range and in the Denver metro area. Much worse.

For the residents there, it has got to be literally terrorizing.

Rain! Glorious Rain!

We had at least 40 minutes of steady and sometimes hard rain yesterday, the greatest amount of rainfall in months. And months.

I wouldn't say the drought is broken by any means, but it was so exciting to see any rain at all, we made fools of ourselves. While visiting a friend, we heard a loud clap of thunder outside, and shortly thereafter I could hear the rain on the roof. "It's raining!" I said. Everybody looked as if I'd gone mad. I said, "Rain!" and got up to go open the door, and sure enough, it was pouring. We all stood around gawping.

Then we went outside and stood around in it. Splashed and played in the puddles. Got muddy. Wet. And thrilled.

I know. Simple things...

We're grateful for the rain.

Let there be more...

Oh, And the Prairie Dogs Are Back, Too

Prairie dogs from the Wiki

The horses and cattle are mostly gone these days. There's been no almost rain, so there is nothing in the fields for them any more. Cattle were being run on the range nearby, but only for a couple of days. There were three horses pasturing reasonably well on about 70 acres through the winter, but the past few weeks have been so dry they've eaten the stubble down to bare ground. They were starting to look pretty bad, too. First one was gone, then another. Finally, on Monday, the last one was gone. Don't know where they've gone to, but these horses have been pasturing on this land for years now, so I imagine they've been moved up north where at least there is something to eat. Or they might have been brought into the barn and are being fed hay -- as is the case with most of the cattle that are still being raised in these parts.

But the prairie dogs that I thought had been removed from their plot over by the community center re-appeared in April, and they've expanded their territory quite a bit. Not only are they skittering around their original town site, they've expanded across the road, and I've even seen them in fields near our place and in the horse pasture. They keep their areas very clean and neat, free of the trash that so often gets blown around by the wind. And they're cute.

They need to learn to stay away from the roads, however. For whatever reason, they seem to love to play in traffic.

"Junkyard Dreams"

Cowboys! Scrape the shit from your boots before entering!

I'm reading a novel by Judith Jeanette Boyer called "Junkyard Dreams" set in and near Santa Fe during the height of the real estate bubble. Of course, the bubble burst and many people lost their homes in the crash. Some of them were our neighbors.

The real estate bubble in New Mexico was mostly confined to certain areas -- particularly to the tonier districts of Santa Fe, Taos, and Albuquerque. Prices went up everywhere, but not to the extent they did in these fancy places, and not nearly as much as they did in Arizona, Nevada, and California, so when the crash came, the effects, while devastating to those who lost so much, weren't as widespread in New Mexico as elsewhere. We bought our home during the height of the bubble so we didn't get any sort of a bargain to speak of; yet our place has not lost much value. The recent appraisal for refinancing came in a couple of thousand dollars or so less than we paid to buy the property and renovate the ruined adobe house in 2005. According to the appraiser, historic houses in this area have held their value pretty well, and ones in decent shape like ours (though I think it still needs work) are selling at a premium. There is some comfort in that, but even if our place had lost much more of its value during the bust than it did, it would still be a welcoming home, and that's really the point of owning a home, isn't it?

The drought is causing much more widespread devastation than the real estate boom and bust cycle, and there is really nothing much anybody can do about it.

Yesterday, we had a taste of what is likely to come: a veritable dust storm, the first we have experienced in New Mexico. It wasn't like the Phoenix Habibs. There was no edge to it, no looming cloud of dust roiling over the landscape like a strange brown wave. Instead, there was a persistent strong cold wind, and the air just filled with dust lifted from the plowed fields in the area. The sky turned brown-gray and smelled strongly of the distinctive aroma of the local dirt.

Today, there is a thin layer of dust everywhere. Clean up will take a while.

This dust storm was predicted. There has been a lot of plowing throughout New Mexico to get ready for planting corn and hay and beans and chilis; the bare soil is easily raised into clouds of dust under the right wind conditions. There's been little rain or snow for years now, and the soil's scrub cover is very light where it exists at all. Dust is inevitable. Old timers remember with dread the dust storms of the 1950's drought, and they wouldn't be surprised if it gets that bad again. There is much muttering in town that we're headed that way.

The weather conditions in "Junkyard Dreams" are similar to the current drought, and I remember the earlier one during the bubble quite well. The trees on our place were badly stressed, and many of them have not recovered. It proved impossible to get anyone to come out here to trim the deadwood, though the electric co-op sends trucks out from time to time to make sure their power lines are clear of tree limbs, so some of the deadwood got cut that way.

My own chainsaw broke. I got a new one last year, but I didn't use it much before winter came on, so this spring, I'll be doing some fairly extensive tree trimming. It's been so long delayed.

We have a small greenhouse, and we put out seeds at the dark of the March moon. They're doing pretty well, but I had to bring them in because of the cold. Temperatures fell precipitously last night and we expect at least one more hard freeze by April before there actually is a spring to speak of, but with no rain, it's a little hard to anticipate whether anything we started in the greenhouse will actually grow once planted in the ground.

We haven't got our raised beds yet. Permaculture is still on the agenda, but managing it in the midst of a severe drought is something we haven't really thought through. Our remaining neighbors have not planted gardens for a couple of years now, in part because of the drought, but the farmers round about are preparing for what looks like a regular planting. One of them, in fact, has expanded his planting for this season. Of course, they'll use irrigation water when the rains fail.

We still have a feral cat colony, though there don't seem to be quite as many of them as there were when we were trapping them for neutering last fall. We counted 25 at that time; we were unable to trap one of them. Now the maximum we've counted is 19; usually, we only see 15 or 16 at a time. They love to stalk the local bird-life, but the birds are wary and smart. And they love to taunt the cats.

Another Sunday morning in high desert....

The Weather Outside...

 Weather satellite images courtesy of the Earth Science Office in Huntsville, Alabama.

When we bought this place in New Mexico seven years ago, a friend in California remarked, "Oh, so you'll have a place to escape when everything goes to shit, eh?" And I said, "Yeah, pretty much." We laughed, ruefully.

Here it is, December 1, and the high desert weather we're enjoying is essentially still Indian Summer. It can get cold overnight, sometimes into the teens, but daytime temps are in the 60s, quite balmy. The skies are pristine deep blue, hardly a cloud to be seen, the nighttime skies can take your breath away with their clarity and billions and billions  of brilliant stars. There's been just a tiny bit of rain, and a tinier bit of snow, since we've been here. There is little wind -- which is unusual, as this area tends to be windblown most of the time (thus the wind-farms down in Willard, for example). The only thing about it is that it is so dry, people are once again worrying about yet another drought.

Meanwhile in California, in the area we left, The Deluge appears to have come. We lived in an area that had been reclaimed from a seasonal lakebed, and our streets would flood from time to time. We were well aware that if the levees were overtopped (which seemed unlikely, but you never knew) our area would be under several feet of water, perhaps right up to our doorstep. Given the sea-level predictions we knew about in 2005, it seemed quite possible that large areas of the Central Valley (and of Sacramento in particular) would become part of an extended San Francisco Bay sometime in the not too distant future, and there would be little that could be (or more particularly, would be)  done about it.

We didn't count on the storms accelerating the process, however, though we were aware that the storms had been turning what was historically a rather dry area into quite a wet one over the course of the previous ten years or so.

I described what was happening to central California as if the region had been shoved some 700 miles northward into the rainforest. Though that was a bit of a stretch, it was remarkable how wet the Central Valley had become. One of the consequences was a very lush urban forest. So lush, in fact, that it had become dangerous to life and limb. What to do about it was a constant worry of public officials. Trees were being uprooted regularly in the many storms, trees and limbs were crashing down all over the place -- sometimes spontaneously, without the impetus of storms --  fire hazards were developing in the summertime, and people just weren't adapting quickly enough. It was impossible to keep up.

Those who lived through the recent climate changes in Central California were aware that the area had gone from quite dry to quite wet in a very short time, but the Official Story tended to claim the changes were only very slight, hardly perceptible, and that these Wet Periods were historically common, going back hundreds of years, so there was no certainty that there was some sort of connection with the realities of Global Climate Change. Officially, the area was still in "drought" for years after the rains came. And by some accounts, it's still in drought even though average rainfall has increased rather smartly.   I never knew whether this was Official Denial or something else, but it was strange...

Here in New Mexico, we're dealing with an opposite set of circumstances, seemingly perpetual drought, or rather, droughts that persist for longer than expected,  broken briefly (large amounts of snow or rain in a short period of time), then return to critically dry conditions that seem to last much longer than before.  The weather patterns are different, leading to overall dryer conditions which in some areas are much dryer. (I intend to post a description of just where we live one day, but not quite yet.)

Where we are is in an intersection of weather patterns. It's actually -- usually -- wetter here than on the west side of the mountains along the Rio Grande. There's at least the chance of more rainfall, but the weather comes in distinct narrow bands. It can be raining hard a few miles on either side of us, but be dry as dust right where we are. Same with snow. Or conditions can reverse: much rain and snow where we are, frightfully dry on either side. It seems that conditions overall are a good deal dryer now than seven years ago, but there was an even dryer period in the interim, so from a relative standpoint, the last few years have been somewhat "wet." It's as if this area had moved some hundreds of miles south into the Chihuahuan Desert of Mexico. It's not a dire situation (yet), but it's not particularly reassuring, either. So few people live in this region, however, that the human presence is not (yet) a huge stress on the land and such water as there is. People are aware that there was a lingering drought in the 1670's that caused the abandonment of the pueblos in the region, and it could happen again. We're not there yet, but it's wise to be on the alert.

In that context, the bloated size of Albuquerque is troublesome. It's New Mexico's one Big City, and from an environmental standpoint, it's way too big. Many times the size it "ought to be." It has only been able to grow as big as it is by extracting practically all the underground water and slurping up every drop it can from the Rio Grande. Realistically, it cannot grow any more, but it will try to anyway. It's the way of cities in the grip of real estate boomers and speculators. They are chock-a-block in ABQ -- and champing at the bit to make more money. The fact that Indian Pueblos border Albuquerque on the north and south and strictly limit the city's growth in those directions serves as a brake on rampant expansion and a reminder of how fragile the environment really is.

One thing that seems clear, though, is that the people in New Mexico are aware of their environmental limitations and they seem to be able to adapt reasonably well -- and reasonably quickly -- to changing conditions whereas people in California seem intent on fighting what's happening or refusing to adapt to changes.

The contrast can be striking sometimes.

We realize we have a lot of work to do on our own outlook before we can say we've adapted to conditions and changing conditions in New Mexico, and we'll make many mistakes along the way. We have a great deal to learn about the local/region environment and how best to live within it.

Apocalypse New Mexico

After the horrible fires last year, this year's fires in Colorado and New Mexico -- which have so far burned far more square miles -- seem almost routine. Not for those who are nearby them, of course, but in the broader scheme of things.

Now Ari LeVaux writes from Placitas for Alternet about the continuing drought and the consequences for New Mexico farmers and everyone else.

The problem of water in New Mexico is constant. Even in "wet" years, there isn't much, and in dry periods, there is far too little for comfort, sometimes not enough for survival. The Anasazi society supposedly collapsed due to a decades-long drought. What really happened, though, is still something of a mystery to the scholars and archaeologists. There is no lack of Anasazi descendants. Droughts there have been, and much worse besides, but the People abide. Somehow.

How much of the current drought is a unique phenomenon is hard to say. I can testify that the unrelenting HEAT is unusual, for I have never experienced so many days of consistently high temperatures since coming to New Mexico for the first time over 30 years ago. It's been a good deal hotter here than in the notorious oven that is California's Central Valley and for a longer period, too. The discomfort is mitigated somewhat by the fact that it's (usually) a drier heat here, but it's coming on Monsoon time, and afternoon showers are incipient if not yet regular. The humidity will rise.

The farms in the area where I am are irrigated by ground water, so they seem to be doing OK, but the grazing land is all dried up, so there are few or no cattle and other livestock on the range. The idea that people are trying to maintain inappropriate landscaping -- lawns and such -- is largely false. There are exceptions, of course, but most people long ago adapted to the desert conditions and generally try to maintain xeriscapes or just leave things to Nature. When there's water, things are green. When there's no water, things dry up.

The basic challenge is to resist the urge to panic which can be difficult as drought conditions intensify. Are we going to have water? Where will it come from? What if there are no rains this summer? What if the aquifer is pumped dry?

And is this drought the permanent drought predicted by climate change experts?

We don't know.

Maybe.

But it's been this bad, or maybe worse, before -- at least according to the memories of the Peoples who have so long endured...

The Apocalypse may be here, but if it is, it's not for the first time; it's here again.